It has been accepted for many years that all humans, regardless of culture, have the same facial expressions. A smile is a smile and means the same thing everywhere. However, a recent study of people's interpretations of facial expressions disagrees with this common wisdom.
Creating many computer generated facial expressions, the researchers asked recent immigrants to the U.S. and Westerns to interpret the faces. The subjects responded differently, which means that facial expressions may not have the biological basis that we have long assumed. This study needs more work (more participants) before this can truly change how we think about the emotions of humans, but it does hint to part of the problems we have when interacting with foreign cultures.
Read about it here
While the nuances of facial expression meaning has definitely changed over thousands of years of alteration by societal and cultual norms, I think it is important to note that basic expression structure has not changed. For example, a grimace of pain is universally the same as is the expression of pure joy. That will never changed even if nuanced smiles and frowns may portray slightly different meanings to different cultures.
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